Explore your mind to find building blocks to your future
I don’t have much money nor fancy possessions.
But while I am poor in wealth, I am rich in experiences.
This allows me to be more interesting than a millionaire. It also makes my writing more trustworthy than other writers who haven’t experienced what they write about.
I contain one of the 5 personality traits called openness otherwise known as openness to experience. My openness to experience has proved my greatest asset. It’s lead me to create my own music, drive across the country, and be receptive to eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism.
With every new experience I…
My experience with psilocybin mushrooms
I write this narrative to dissolve the stigma surrounding psychedelics and to promote a new age of medicine and peace of mind. Psychedelics have the potential to heal the afflictions that plague people’s lives — the traumas, addictions, and all the depression and neuroticism of the mind.
The world is a troublesome place. In America, almost 20% of people struggle with a mental health condition. The pandemic has only made things worse with depression and anxiety double what they were in 2014 according to a national survey.
Imagine the people who could be saved by psychedelics; the suicides that could…
“The first step is usually, I know who I am not. Process of elimination. Defining ourselves by what we are not is the first step that leads us to really knowing who we are.” — Matthew McConaughey
I was a real good kid— I did everything that my parents asked. Growing up, I got good grades, played in the school band, and even lectured at church.
I went to college, got two degrees, and graduated with honors.
Yet throughout this whole process, there was this underlying feeling that I was missing something; a feeling that I never really knew myself. It always seemed like I was going through the motions for someone else, while I put my own ambitions on the back burner.
I failed to realize that you have to please yourself before others.
It took…
“The Earth is what we all have in common.”
The locals warned us not to attempt it in one day; to get to the river, camp out, and make it a two-day trip.
Even the national park website warned against it. But as stubborn 20 something year-olds, we set out to prove them wrong.
This past week my backpacking buddy and I hiked the South Kaibab to Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon. At 16.5 miles with almost a mile of elevation loss and gain, it was the most strenuous hike I’ve ever done and one I will not soon forget.
Below are the map and elevation of…
Implement these tips to produce better work in less time.
There is a subliminal epidemic going on right now and few realize it. The inability to focus isn’t just making us less productive, it’s contributing to the plethora of mental health issues plaguing society. In this day and age, the average attention span is a mere 8 seconds!
We all have the capacity to focus, it’s in our neural programming to focus solely on fleeing when a saber tooth tiger comes at us. But let’s face it, survival today as we know it, even with its stressors, is much easier than in prehistoric times.
Put on your cape, embark on the hero’s journey, and meet your destiny.
I’m at a turning point in my life. In just a few days, my fate will be decided. After failing out of my hospital clinical affiliation last year, I’m being given one more chance to prove that I am worthy of the title ‘Dr.’ To continue school I have to demonstrate my knowledge by treating a patient.
I’m usually very nervous when it comes to these hands-on evaluations. If there’s one thing I hate most in life it's letting myself and others down.
But this is different than any practical before. This past year changed me.
I suffered from depression…
Only through love can we heal our suffering.
There is so much trouble in the world. The root of the trouble is suffering. Humans suffer because they do not take the time to know themselves. They run through life like a race and never stop to see what's inside their hearts. They don’t know what it means to be compassionate with themselves and others.
When humans suffer, their suffering affects everyone around them. It causes pain to the people they work and live with and this contributes to others suffering if they do not know how to transmute it properly.
But if humans can change themselves to be…
What you do matters even when you don’t see the results.
I was in Chemistry-2 on lunch break. I had about an hour to finish but I just couldn’t figure out what to do. My time was quickly dwindling as my eyes drifted back and forth between the gibberish on the page and the bees bouncing about the flowers poking above the shaggy grass.
Thankfully, my lab partner, Steve, came to my aid. Steve was an engineering major and fit the part perfectly — tall, lanky, with glasses and a wrinkled button-down shirt. I asked him to be my partner because he looked intelligent. …
You never know what obstacles you’ll meet on the road.
The day started with my truck almost rolling backward down a hill into a line of cars behind. Allow me to further explain.
My truck was a decently aged freight liner with a manual transmission. As my Guatemalan co-pilot Jose remarked, there was, “mucho pesos” in the back. We were carrying about 10,000 pounds of plant material on the rack body and tasked to bring it to a house in the northern part of New Jersey.
About an hour into our drive, the surrounding concrete turned into a mountain forest. I could feel the subsequent strain of the turbocharged diesel…
Quench the flame before it becomes an all-consuming fire.
Anxiety is tricky to deal with because it feels so powerful. It harnesses our fight or flight response via our body’s adrenal system — the same system that was used to flee from saber tooth tigers back in prehistoric days.
Anxiety can trick us into thinking thoughts are as dangerous as saber-tooth tigers when they’re just harmless products of the mind.
Typically, when faced with an actual threat in the wild, we’d run or fight. At that moment our minds are hyperfocused on survival and our bodies are primed for quick reactions. …
Jesse Pedersen
Helping people find happiness while exploring nature and spreading compassion; check out my music — Spotify @Jesse Pedersen; Instagram: @Jesse__Pedersen
